Let's pretend this never happened.

So...What? What can we say? We haven't posted in a long while and then the fact that we didn't post made us not want to post and have to say, "Sorry we haven't posted in a while, we're real busy, there's stuff we're doing and it makes it so we don't so this. So blah blah we'll never do it again." But then I went out and read your blogs and it made me want to blog and some of you haven't posted in WAY longer then us so...I may not post for 10 months after this but today, this Sunday morning, I am.

...So they moved our church to 2:00. I know. It's an Abrahamic Sacrifice that we swap every year with the Spanish ward. One ward gets the 10:00 slot for a year and the other trudges on into the dark evening hours plastic smiles on their faces when arriving to see the other ward, happy and full of promise of a Sunday afternoon, filing out still singing (as a reminder to those coming in) 'Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel, Push Along.' Luckily our ward is WAY worth it. We have been churching with them for, what, 5 years? And they...or, rather, we, continue to surprise. The other day, someone referenced the 'bishop sleep'-- you know, when the bishop and/or councilors doze off a bit on the stand, and my first thought was, 'Our bishop is literally sitting on the edge of his seat in case he has to rip the microphone out of some blasphemer's hand'. It would be hard to fully illustrate what I'm talking about, but here are a few of my favorite quotes from Fast and Testimony meeting, AKA "open mic night":

"Brothers and sisters, we need to kick Satan where the sun don't shine."

"I know the bishop is gonna get mad at me for saying this, but I think I need to...but the bishop's not going like it if I say it from up here, but I think...wait, I think the bishop's not going to like this at all, but here goes..." At which point, the bishop got up and whispered in the bearer's ear, "If I'm not going to like it, maybe we should save it for later."

And my very favorite:

"I took a bite of the banana and thought, 'Oh my God...it's fast Sunday.'"

If I seem condescending, please know that I deeply love this ward and all the people in it and we are loved by them. I was co-vice president in charge of the Christmas program (those are the callings up for grabs here in Jersey) and we put together a pretty nice little program, and the morning came to perform it, and it had snowed all night and the streets were a mess and it really is hard for lots of our members to get to church; we take the bus or the train or depend on someone to share a ride, and so a big snow storm can wipe out early morning church with one cold breath. So, we were up, looking out the windows and thinking, 'there is no way this thing is going down today.' but my phone buzzed and we got the text... "Church is still on!" (just like pioneer times, I'm sure), so we packed our Honda hand cart and made the exodus to the building (and by "building," I mean the second story over a 99-cent store). At 10:00, there were about 5 people who did not come in our car sitting in the seats. But more came, and we worked our numbers up to 50, maybe 75, and we did our Christmas program and it was really lovely, and the spirit was there; even for so few of us, the spirit was there. Lindsay (who was one of the narrators) said at one point she looked out at the people who were there and they were people like us, who are far from family or have made this ward their family and who thought, 'Snow or no snow, I have to be to church this morning' and we were all quiet and we all listened and everyone wanted to be there. And Thurman, an 8-year-old who stood up and sang 'Were you There?' with no music in his hand, only his dad to stand and sing behind him, may have had to close his eyes to forget that we were all there looking at him, but even with his eyes closed, we were all still there, and it was wonderful.

~P